World Museum Liverpool Diplays Great Auk Egg

The large, finely-marked specimen has been in the museum’s collections for about 150 years and there is no record of it being put on display before.

The slaughter of the flightless Great Auk for its oil, feathers and eggs helped inspire the fledgling conservation movement in Victorian times. The Great Auk stands with the Dodo and Passenger Pigeon as a symbol of human exploitation of wildlife.

The Great Auk once existed in countless thousands on both sides of the Atlantic including Scotland, the Isle of Man and Ireland. They became rarer and rarer until the last breeding pair was spotted by three sailors on a rocky outcrop on the Island of Eldey, off Iceland, in 1844.

The men climbed up and, in an act of senseless brutality, strangled the birds and smashed the egg.

It is generally accepted that the last Great Auk to be seen alive was a solitary individual in Newfoundland in 1852. Since then, despite many false alarms, there have been no confirmed sightings.

Clem Fisher, the museum’s curator of vertebrate zoology, says: “This egg was collected long ago when nature conservation was virtually unknown. It reminds us that whole species can disappear in this way. This particular egg has probably the most interesting and beautiful markings of all the 75 eggs which are known to exist in the world.” -- www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk